1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information processing for usage information of visitors to various facilities such as amusement facilities and, for example, to a facility usage information processing apparatus, method for information processing thereof and portable terminal apparatus for offering usage information such as a congestion status for each attraction of a facility to facility users and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, with regard to management of facility usage information, arrangements are known for obtaining information of behavior in an event site, such as current positions, visiting locations and staying time of visitors of the event site (e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-317958), for identifying visitors to a facility such as a sports stadium with the use of IC tags to perform a delivery service of various pieces of information to the visitors with the use of cellular phones (e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-94431), for recognizing users every time the users pass through a facility in an amusement park and the like to manage users of the facility (e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 1998-301984), and others.
By the way, in various facilities such as amusement facilities, even if visitors are dispersed to a large number of attractions, considerable congestion is expected, and as a waiting time becomes longer, visitors feel annoyed and exhausted. Although a certain level of effectiveness can be expected from crowd control on the premises by administrators, human management has limitations. A visitor in a waiting area of a certain attraction cannot know exact waiting times of distant attractions. Also, a congestion status in a facility cannot be known from outside of the facility.